Voices-only Wednesday: Psalms and prayers from Ukraine

Ukraine in crisis:  Prayers for the church and the future

Bryan, who lives in Oklahoma, first visited the Eastern European nation in 1993, following up with contacts from a gospel campaign conducted by missionary Eddie Cloer, which resulted in about 100 baptisms. Bryan’s mission team helped launch the Petrovsky Church of Christ in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. (Recently, a mortar shell explosion killed one of the first converts in Donetsk. See our coverage, including Bryan’s remembrances of the church member, Galina Chugaevskaya.)

A few weeks ago, Bryan visited the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, to conduct a Fall Singing Festival. Many of the participants are members of Petrovsky, the Cup of Life Church of Christ and other congregations in the east. Now they’re living — almost as refugees — in Kiev due to the conflict between Ukraine’s military and pro-Russian separatists.

In the above video, a Christian named Zhennya reads a prayer as the church members respond with choruses of “Alleluia.” 

Zhennya was kidnapped by the separatists and — after much prayer — released, making this song all the more powerful.

Here’s another hymn, based on Psalm 117: “Praise the Lord, all you nations;  extol him, all you peoples.  For great is his love toward us,  and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord.”

I recognized the soloist here — Miroslav Seliverstov. The son of a minister in eastern Ukraine, I met him in 2011 in Donetsk when he was studying at the Ukrainian Bible Institute, affiliated with Lubbock, Texas-based Sunset International Bible Institute. The violence forced the Donetsk school to close, though its administrators plan to reopen the school soon.

Here’s one more song, based on Psalm 130: “Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord; Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.”

(In this video you’ll catch a glimpse of Imoh Anthony, a Nigerian native I also met in 2011 — at a church retreat on the Crimean Peninsula, which now is controlled by Russian separatists. Anthony moved to Ukraine to study computer engineering. It’s amazing and uplifting to see an African Christian singing hymns alongside Ukrainian Christians.)

“I love this work because it gives me an opportunity to be creative,” Bryan said, “and to try some things vocally that we are not used to in our churches in America, like singing some of our prayers, singing some of the Scriptures or reading a text while the congregation sings.”